The Matrix Revisited
by Scriptomancer
Summary: I always thought I could do better than the sequels, so this is my take on what follows the original film. I borrowed a few elements that fans might recognize from the two sequel films, but forget everything you knew - this is my vision of how it could be


The Matrix Revisited

**Part One: **_**The Dream**_

The dim light of the subway flickered between the bodies of ignorant minds rushing past and reflected from Brahmin's wrapped, tinted sunglasses. The prospect mind was late; time almost up. Oh, she had made it, all right, but she had been checking Brahmin out for the past ten minutes—his close-cropped hair, neatly trimmed goatee, his absolute and total lack of movement. Most of all, Brahmin had no doubt that the prospect was considering the dark olive color of his skin coupled with the oddly matched dress attire he had chosen for his Residual Self-Image.

Well, if she did not decide in the next thirty seconds, Brahmin would decide for her and walk away. Unlike many of his counterparts among Zion's ship captains, Brahmin loathed every moment of being within the Matrix. Many mistook his name to refer to the bullish forms and methods he often executed, but truly it bespoke his obsession with truth. Having followed a religion of lies within a simulated world of lies, Brahmin felt so fortunate to enter the Real World, no matter how broken it was, that he took the name which the ignorant minds of his former, false family had for the Source of Truth—Brahmin.

The name Brahmin stood for every reason to never go back to the Matrix, and yet here he was—attempting to free another mind from the Maya—no, the Matrix. Brahmin shook his head for the first time, forcing the former thoughts and beliefs of his old, simulated life out of his mind. He was Brahmin of Zion. And this prospect had just run out of time.

Just as he made to stand, the straight-edge white girl made her approach from around the square pillar and plopped next to him.

"You're late," Brahmin said as if to himself.

The girl looked at him and said, "Hey, it's not like I make a habit of meeting strange men in the subway in the middle of the night."

"Don't look at me; look straight ahead," Brahmin snapped in as low a tone as he could. "We don't know each other and don't want to, get it?"

The prospect shuddered in surprise, then looked down at her feet.

"Good. Now, since you obviously trust me enough to be here right now, then I am not going to waste any more time convincing you. Truth and deception are entangled all around us right now, at this very moment. It is this fact which brought you here. If you wish to free your mind, then follow me."

Brahmin stood up without another word and began walking.

"What?" The prospect was suddenly unsure of what she wanted to do.

With each step he took, Brahmin allowed a broader grin to spread across his face. Whether or not the girl followed him was irrelevant—it just amused him at how the unfreed minds of the Matrix tried so desperately to veil their true selves from everyone, never suspecting that it was they who were blinded from the truth about themselves. The Matrix had likely dealt this girl a positive hand—a decent family, a pretty roof over her head, all of her basic needs met with plenty of means left over to render her into the cowardly, belligerent brat he had just challenged to follow him.

Brahmin quickly cut through the crowd to a service door with fading letters on it that used to spell out MAINTENANCE in large print. It cracked open just as he reached it, allowing him to open and slip behind. Just as it almost slammed shut, a black Converse shoe slid in to catch it, and was followed by a heavily pierced face framed by cheaply dyed black hair.

"Come." The word echoed softly down the stairs which descended into blackness. A flare ignited near Brahmin, illuminating a second individual who had been working the door. "Lock it behind us, Polt."

Brahmin took the lead down the stairs, followed by the prospect with the leather-clad man in dreadlocks named Polt bringing up the rear.

"Cap, we got to do somethin' about this girl's name," Polt said in a rhythmic muddle of accents.

"You mean 'Nicole'?" asked the prospect. "It was my great-aunt's name or something."

Polt laughed. "No, baby, I mean your real name."

"I don't know what you mean," the girl said after a pause.

Brahmin suppressed a laugh as he said, "Viper."

"Yeah, dat's the one!" Polt cackled to the point of wheezing.

"Viper's just my alias. And what kind of name is 'Polt,' anyway?"

Polt's demeanor turned rough. "A bad-ass one."

"Tell her what it's short for," Brahmin cut in.

"Ain't short for nothin'!" Polt said. "Dammit, Cap! You said you wouldn't be bringin' that up no more!"

Brahmin dismissed Polt's objections with another chuckle. In a moment, they finally reached the bottom of the descending flights of stairs to an abandoned drainage cistern.

"What kind of party is this?" the girl asked wryly.

Brahmin turned to face her for the first time. "Despite his misguided attempts at humor, Polt actually touched on something relevant. Your name is a tie you have to this world. Your given name is the final nail in the coffin which keeps you buried in the false reality presented to you. There is much you must abandon if you wish to know the answer to the question."

"Wh—what is the Matrix?" the girl asked.

Brahmin held out his left hand. "You have a choice: take this blue pill, and you stop here, waking up at daddy's house believing whatever you wish." He extended his right hand. "Or take this red pill, and the door to the truth will be opened."

The girl looked at both pills, then at Brahmin and Polt. "Wait," she said in apprehension. "I don't do drugs."

A sigh of frustration escaped Brahmin's lips. Why couldn't the program writers create a different codec for the tracer program? "We don't have time," he exhaled. "Make your choice, but either way—"

The girl's body twitched and her face contorted in agony. Sunglasses began to form around her eyes before she fell to the ground in convulsions in the midst of a loud, reverberating echo.

"Good shot," Brahmin said.

"No problem," Polt replied, pointing his smoking gun up.

Brahmin knelt beside the girl who was bleeding viscerally. Glimpses of an Agent came and went like a flickering hallucination. "You almost made it, kid. Just weren't fast enough."

"Red. . . pill." The words came out with a mouthful of blood.

"Whoa, Cap, can we do that?" Polt asked.

The decision coursed through Brahmin's mind in an instant—he knew not what would happen if the tracer program was exposed to an Agent attempting to jack the mind of the hardwired prospect whose digital self laid dying before him. But she was begging for help. He could give her a quick death with another bullet and even possibly route the Agent's presence, but what if her kernel shell didn't corrupt fast enough? The Agent could still possibly get through, and then they would be without a prayer.

"Get her some water," Brahmin said to Polt. He leaned in close to the dying girl. "If I come to regret this, then so will you." He slipped the red pill into her mouth and Polt dumped a double handful of water from the abandoned cistern on her face.

"Do you think any of it actually reached her lips?" Brahmin asked in irritation.

"You see any tea cups around here?" Polt barked.

Brahmin was already on his phone. "Axel, do you have a reading on her?"

"How is she?"

Brahmin looked over his shoulder to see a bald Polt entering the medbay with a freshly soiled rag between his hands. "She's alive," Brahmin said as he observed Doc's skilled hands at work, waiting for a cue to lend aid if needed. "Doc should be applauded for that little feat."

"That bad?" Polt asked, peering over Brahmin's shoulder.

"Whatever occurred within the Matrix took a substantial toll on her neural system," Doc said over-loudly in his usual deep, nasal tone. The wrinkles on his old face trembled slightly as a bead of sweat slid down his brow. "Not only is every muscle in her body atrophied, but it appears the motor functions controlled by her cerebellum may be severely retarded. Her cerebral activity is off the charts, though her brain has been emitting the lower delta waves the entire time I've been monitoring her."

"Translation, Doc," Polt said with a confused half-grin.

"It means she's a vegetable," Brahmin said matter-of-factly.

"Indeed," confirmed Doc. "Albeit not exactly a textbook one."

"Any idea if it'll change?" Polt asked eagerly.

Doc paused and then turned around to look Polt in the eye. "Son, all my years in medicine tell me this girl is worse off than when you found her."

Polt swore. "And here I was hopin' this chick would put an end to this lil' sausage fest we got on this ship."

Brahmin cleared his throat sharply. "Enough. Go up to the helm and see if Axel and Chopper have any more maintenance tasks."

"Aye, Cap," Polt said glumly.

Axel was a rookie operator, fresh out of training just a year earlier. The _Veritas_ was his first posting and Brahmin his first captain. He seemed to do well enough as a regular mate that when the old operator was reassigned to another vessel, Axel was promoted to first operator. Which on a small ship like the _Veritas_ was a token title, since he was now the only operator onboard.

The _Veritas_ didn't see much action; usually just doing courier runs, locate other ships who got stranded amidst the subterranean tunnels of the broadcast depth and give them a jump, or report their position so a bigger ship could tow them back to Zion.

In fact, the only times Brahmin would send his crew into the Matrix was to either assist other captains in one mission or another, which was uncommon enough, or if Axel was lucky enough to arrange a meeting via cyber-correspondence with an unfreed mind still jacked into the Matrix.

It was just such an arrangement which lead to this "Viper" being in the _Veritas_' medbay. Axel had never been so frustrated—he had aided in the liberation of six minds in his 18 months of duty, but this was his first time personally making contact and setting up the meet. After so much work and hope, the newly freed Viper may never come to know the world which she had the luck to finally enter.

"Hey, Assle, you got any problems for big daddy to fix?"

Axel ignored Polt's intentional mispronunciation of his name. The racially-confused and pale-skinned Polt seemed to think less of earth-born, home-grown humans born in Zion, and he never missed an opportunity to let Axel know it.

"Ship's running smooth, Polt, all thanks to Chop and none to you," Axel said with his fingers running over the numerous keyboards. "Why don't you go find something shiny to play with, yeah?"

"Aw, don' go and take me personally, Assle," Polt said with a condescending pat on Axel's crew cut head. "You know, you like my kid brother, man. You my boy."

"Fantastic," Axel replied in a less than enthused tone. "Now, are you done distracting me?"

"Oh, it's like that, uh?" Polt spun around in melodramatic fashion and faced the jack-in chairs, one of which was occupied. "Fine, then. I'll see if Fist is up for a round in the Construct."

Axel sighed impatiently, then scooted over to the jack-in chairs. Polt already had himself half-way strapped in before Axel slammed the pointed connection module into the cocky man's bald head.

"Jeez, Axel! Be more gentle next time!" Polt heard himself shout. He was startled to hear the shout echo around him, until his eyes adjusted and he realized he was in a dark prison cell.

"Axel!" called Polt in a fit of panic, slamming his fists against the cold steel bars. "Axel! Load the combat simulator! Hey, this ain't funny, bro!"

Satisfied that Polt was out of his hair, Axel grinned and turned to another screen to monitor the update of Zion's latest operations protocol which was being loaded straight to Fist's mind via his cerebral node. A moment's glance informed Axel that the upload was nearly complete, so he prepared Fist for reintegration from the Construct. When Fist sat up, he rubbed his squinty eyes and gave Axel a hard stare. "What was that all about?"

"Oh, you mean with Polt?" Axel looked away, knowing that Fist would've been conscious for Polt's hazing toward him.

"Yeah. Let him up."

Axel reluctantly began the program termination sequence, knowing that misuse of the Construct was grounds for demotion, if not a court martial.

The coaxial connection pinion was barely removed from his head before Polt was out the chair screaming.

"What was that, Assle? Do that again and I'ma have your ass, boy!"

"Poltergeist."

"Man, Fist, how many times I gotta' tell you—" Polt was saying as he turned around to bawl out Fist only to get laid out by a swift punch.

"His name is 'Axel', and the rest of us stay alive only by his focus and determination," Fist said as he rubbed his hand. "I want to stay alive; do you want to stay alive?"

"Yeah, whatever," Polt conceded as he hobbled to his feet while rubbing his sore jaw. "If anyone needs me, I'll be down below with Chop."

"Thanks, Fist," Axel said as he reset the software and set it to power-save mode.

Fist eyed him sharply. "Don't thank me till you earn it."

Wandering.

Bland cityscape, thin streams of traffic, few pedestrians.

Alone.

Many were around, but none were awake. Sleeping wakers, walking dreamers.

Silence.

Without a sound, she watched the girl wander down the sidewalk, oblivious to others passing by and neither being noticed.

A voice.

She looked around, but no one heard. The girl looked as well but did not slow her pace.

"Come."

She knew she heard it this time, but the girl did not heed it. Then the girl tripped and she realized that the girl was her, and that she had been following herself. But how was that possible?

Noise.

Passing cars, blaring horns, millions of whispers worming their way into her head.

"Calm, child."

The girl looked up to see who had spoken. Her eyes met deep brown pools surrounded by a kindly wrinkled face framed by a short black perm.

"Who are you?" she asked.

"Never you mind askin' for what you can't offer in return," said the old lady with a hint of sass in her tone. "Mhm," she said after a moment's glance at the girl. "I think you had best come with me, honey."

Before she knew what she was doing, the girl had her hand in the old woman's and was being lead down the street.

"Where are we going?" she asked.

The old woman chuckled merrily to herself. "Let me ask you this: Do you like cookies?"

"Captain, ETA to Zion: ten minutes."

Brahmin sat up in bed at the sudden alert from the onboard communicator near the door. "Acknowledged," he said gruffly.

Moments later, he stood behind Axel as the _Veritas _made its approach to the city.

"Zion Control, this is the _Veritas _requesting dock entry."

A pleasant female face with an exotic hairstyle appeared on a viewing monitor.

"_Veritas_, this is Zion Control. Maintain approach vector and submit clearance authorization now."

Brahmin entered his clearance codes on a secondary terminal and nodded to Axel, who notified the controller.

"Authorization complete, _Veritas_. Proceed through the gate to docking port 27. And welcome home!"

The thick thirty square meter blast doors parted to the side in time to reveal the roof of the tunnel beyond rising to its full height of approximately ninety meters. Brahmin smirked at the thought of a determined Machine horde fighting its way through the perimeter defenses only to be stopped by impenetrable blast doors backed by a hundred meters of solid metal. His mirth was mildly offset by the possibility of a malfunction in the hydraulic mechanism which opened the tunnel (or Zion's Sphincter, as some of the crasser ship captains and operators called it), leaving the _Veritas_ in a vice-like grip. But that had never happened before.

Beyond the threshold, the ship entered the Dock, a grim and soulless honeycomb of brightly lit metal walkways and landing pads stretching out to the domed walls from a central luminescent hub. Port 27 was beneath the main promenade encircling the pillar hub near its base.

"Looks like the ship is getting' some maintenance," Polt said from near the door.

Brahmin looked back without turning around. "Wouldn't count on it, Polt."

"Well, why else would they stick us at the ass end of the Dock?"

"The ship isn't scheduled for another overhaul till next month," quipped Axel as he carefully maneuvered the _Veritas_ downward to the landing platform. "Who knows?

"The boy is right," offered Chopper, whose arms and face were covered with grease. "Whatever reason Command has us down here isn't for usual."

"I'll tell you what isn't for usual," Brahmin cut in, "is soldiers deliberating against simple orders. Pack it up and let's get out of here."

Brahmin left those on the bridge to mutter to themselves as he slid down a ladder to the lower deck. A few long steps put him in earshot of the medbay.

"Very good," he heard Doc's voice saying.

"Any news?" Brahmin asked as he stepped through the door.

Doc looked up from his table and assembled instruments. "With the girl? There's no improvement, captain."

Brahmin scratched his chin. "We've been directed to a bottom side docking port."

Doc nodded to indicate he understood the implications; the _Veritas_ wouldn't be leaving Zion for awhile until the engineers and mechanics had their way with her.

"Then arrangements need to be made," Doc replied. He paused his collection of items and looked at the girl.

"Was it all a waste?" Brahmin asked.

"Time will tell, captain. At this point, there's no sign either way."

The girl sat quietly on the couch as she had for some time. When she had arrived at the old woman's bawdy apartment, there had been a man there who asked to speak with the old woman alone. The few attempts she had made to eavesdropping on their conversation proved futile, as the Asian man in the white Oriental blazer spotted her every time she sneaked close.

"What is wrong with me?" she wondered aloud to herself. Not once in her life did she ever allow herself to be punked like that. Maybe she should just leave. But where should she go? The street she had walked down to get here seemed familiar enough, but rather than the regular boulevard she would take to school, it almost seemed like the foggy, tattered memory of a distant dream flirting against the line of her recollection.

Leaving definitely sounded good. The girl quickly rose from the couch and nearly tripped over the coffee table. Vertigo began to set in, but the girl used her momentum to stumble forward into the door.

Locked.

Starting to panic, the girl looked over her should as her fingers fumbled over the multiple locks on the door. The old woman and the man in white were still talking. If she could unlock the door, she could make good her escape and they would be none the wiser.

But the locks wouldn't budge. The girl whimpered and unintentionally pounded the door in fretful panic.

A chair moved. The girl turned around to see the man in white rushing in her direction. Her own reflection in his small round sunglasses made her scream, and she turned against the door once more.

She went through it like a satin curtain. But rather than entering the hallway of the apartment complex, she was floating in mid-air several stories above traffic. Some of the people on the street below noticed and began to point up at her. Her momentum pushed her outward into empty space, and she tumbled around to see the upside down doorway she had just left now occupied by the man in white reaching out to her.

"Get away!" she screamed at him.

A sonic roar as the sound of an approaching jet plane began to fill the sky. Unable to alter her slowly spinning drift away from the apartment building—the surreal fact that she was in mid-air sinking into her mind—the girl received a glimpse of something approaching on the horizon.

Spinning, spinning, the girl's vantage point continued to change from the man in white to the approaching noise back to the man in white.

"What—what is going on?"

The roar intensified to the point where she could no longer hear the man's yelling. The girl could just barely discern the pinpoint of a person—someone flying like her? Behind the screaming person seemed to be storm clouds dragging in their wake.

She was a good thirty feet from the building now, hovering about midway between the old lady's apartment building and the mid-rise building across the street. As her body rotated again, she saw that the man in white was no longer reaching out to her from the door. Her body rotated again only to see the person—a woman, evidently, guessing from the wild purple hair flying about her—was so close that her voice seemed to penetrate the girl's head.

A heavy weight crashed down on her.

"Gotcha'," the man in white said in triumph, even though they were now falling to the ground. The girl began to squirm in protest, but the man in white held her firmly.

How had he jumped that far to grab her?

Probably the same way she had been floating in mid-air, she mused.

The flying woman whizzed overhead where the girl had been floating just an instant before, and a smothering of storm clouds followed in her wake. Rain began to fall, soaking the girl's clothes and matting strands of wet hair to her face.

"We're going to die!" she screamed.

"No," said the man in white most assuredly. "We shall not."

The man in white kicked his legs together and leaned forward. Whether he manipulated the updraft or was merely caught by it the girl couldn't tell, but his maneuver sent them through a large window on an upper floor of an office building parallel to their free fall.

Touching her face out of reflex, her hand pulled away with streaks of blood.

"Oh my God! I'm bleeding!" she stretched her hand out to the man in white, who appeared none the worse for wear, though he had just plummeted several meters before smashing through a commercial-sized pane of glass.

"You'll live," he said.

"No thanks to you!" the girl retorted.

"That will be put to the test," the man in white said as he stood up and brushed himself off. He looked around the room and pointed to a restroom sign. "Go there. Now. Whatever happens, do not come out. When it is safe, I will retrieve you."

"To hell with that," the girl said, running for the main door to the hallway. When she reached it, an odd feeling of reverie came over her and nearly sent her dreaming again as she had been on the sidewalk before the old woman found her. She watched herself as her hand opened the door. A homely red-haired man in a tacky brown suit greeted her with a Desert Eagle pistol pointed straight at her chest.

"Get down!" shouted the man in white.

Reality crashed down on her again. The girl hit the deck and rolled behind a cubicle wall. The sonic boom from the firearm made her ears ring.

"This does not concern you, Agent," she heard the man in white say in his peculiar Asian accent.

"Target: Unchanged. I have come for the human."

The red-haired man, an agent or something according to the man in white, said he came for the human. An agent of what? And weren't they all humans? The girl peeked around the cubicle corner in attempts to figure out what they were talking about.

"Leave now, Agent. The girl is not your concern."

"Obstruction will lead to deletion," the Agent said in anger. Then, in a softer tone, added, "Comply, Seraph."

"We all do as we must," replied the man in white whom the Agent called Seraph. He produced a larger gun, fully automatic, from his white Oriental blazer and fired upon the Agent, who then moved to and fro as a blur.

The Agent had dodged every single bullet! The girl was in such a state of shock that she did not see Seraph move on the Agent until he had already jumped laterally from a desk and kicked the man in his over-sized red head.

The Agent fell forward, and rose without his sunglasses. His eyes were filled with inhuman wrath. Dispensing with words, he came at Seraph with his fist cocked for a haymaker which Seraph easily countered. Three shots later, an upward palm to the chin, a side chop to the exposed throat, and a pivoted elbow to the chest sent the Agent careening through the wall.

Seraph ran to the cubicle where the girl was hiding herself.

"You must learn to do as ordered," he said hurriedly. "Come, there isn't much time."

Grabbing her hand without waiting for a response, the girl was pulled away by Seraph, who then stopped, slamming her into him.

"What's the big—,"

An ear-piercing shriek enveloped her as a wave of glass shards cascaded past her. Seraph grunted, and it occurred to the girl that he had shielded her from the deadly shards.

"Seraph!" she gasped in concern.

Without a word, he shoved her back in the cubicle and turned to confront the latest threat. A woman wearing a gypsy shawl with purple hair caught in the draft of wind fluttering through the devastated office levitated near the edge of the floor where the shattered window used to be.

"Don't make this more difficult than necessary, Witch," Seraph said through gritted teeth, his white suit tarnished with crimson spots from the glass shards .

"Ah, the fortunetelling bitch's lapdog! The Frenchman will be pleased that I claimed two birds with one stone."

The Witch screamed once more, with several office objects, chairs, keyboards, water coolers, rising to her call. Seraph ran an erratic pattern toward her, dodging the floating office supplies all the way. Her haunting shriek rose to a shrill climax, at which the entire office became a maelstrom, seeming to come alive and seeking Seraph's blood.

Seraph returned fire when able, indiscriminately and unsuccessfully shooting off his MP-7 between evading and deflecting the make-shift projectiles. He was pummeled to his knees near defeat, when a series of successive resounding, high caliber gunshots broke the spell of the Witch's determination. She fell to the floor in a limp, wretched mess.

The Agent had made his way back to the large room without either Seraph or the Witch taking notice. He strode to his neutralized target and stood over her with a proud smirk. "You have been deleted," said the Agent before discharging a final round through the Witch's head.

"Now for the other exile," he said, turning around to ascertain Seraph's location.

Seraph jumped in front of the Agent and tossed his white bloody coat onto the Agent's head and used the sleeves to tie the Agent's outstretched arm behind his back.

"Dodge this," Seraph said as he took to the air in a reverse aerial roundhouse kick which landed in the Agent's ribcage and pitched him over the edge of the shattered window to fall to the street below.

Seraph looked back to the girl, who had tucked herself in a ball beneath a desk.

"Time to go," he said.

She acquiesced with a mere nod and followed without protest.

It had been awhile since Brahmin reported directly to Commander Jason Lock's personal office within the promenade's hub at the center of the Dock, and, truth be told, he was a little nervous. The unscheduled maintenance order, unexpected shore leave, the secretive oversight of the prospect's comatose body's relocation to an undisclosed medical area; all of it made Brahmin nervous. Lock was the Supreme Commander of the Army of Zion, and while he was respected as such, Brahmin didn't trust him. Not when Lock's career stood in the balance.

"I suppose you're wondering what this is all about," Lock said as he pushed aside a few intelligence reports to make room for his folded hands.

Arms folded behind his back, Brahmin stood at ease. "Yes, sir, I am."

Lock eyed him carefully. "You've submitted your ship's log into official record."

"Indeed, sir," Brahmin said. "As part of protocol when re-entering Zion, all ship data was pre-emptively uploaded to Zion's mainframe."

"I am not aware of any such protocol," Lock said irritatedly.

Brahmin studied him with a raised brow, wondering at the man's motives. "Personal protocol, sir. I run a tight ship."

A frustrated sigh escaped Lock's lips. "Very well. Understand that what I am about to tell you is extremely privileged information."

Lock waited for acknowledgment, and did not speak again until Brahmin nodded. "Understood, sir."

"No doubt you are familiar with Zion's popular cult and the captain under my command who charismatically incites foolish hope in it." Lock paused to let the clinch out of his jaw. After a pacifying breath, he continued. "It appears said captain has freed a prospect who fits the cult's. . . predicted criteria."

Brahmin permitted a taunting smirk—he could see how it hurt Lock's pride to concede this, his own personal views about Zion's messiah notwithstanding. While he was skeptical about the prophecy of the inexplicable return of Zion's founder, the revelation intrigued him nevertheless. Lock, on the other hand, would appear quite the fool for his past scorn—if it was true. "So Morpheus found his prophecy, did he?"

"He found. . . something," Lock conceded. "What, we cannot know for sure. After careful observation, the new recruit," Lock quickly checked his notes, "this 'Neo' does not appear to be any different than you or I. Physiology reads standard, although his neural kinetics have been measured far above normal."

The cynicism in Lock's tone seemed to waver, which made Brahmin's smirk break into a grin. Brilliant tactician and logistical assessor though he was, Lock knew as much about the Matrix as the Machines knew about mercy. As such, the commander was broaching the situation from a purely sterile and militant perspective. "That is something, indeed," Brahmin replied. "Wherein lies the mystery, sir?"

Lock cocked his head, withholding indignation toward a possible sleight. "What do you mean, Captain Brahmin?"

Not one to be intimidated nor baited, Brahmin stepped forward and folded his hands in front. "You stated that command cannot be sure what it is Morpheus found, but by your own briefing, it is clear that Morpheus freed another mind."

"You know it is more than that!" Lock shouted while rising from his chair. "When placed within the Construct, this Neo is said to exceed the abilities of every soldier, and by all accounts exceeds the feats of even Agents. I don't have to tell you what that means."

Brahmin knew exactly what it meant—the long-standing feud between Morpheus and Lock appeared to be drawing to a close, and Lock was not liking the direction in which the scales tipped. "Perhaps you should explain it to me, sir."

The angry spittle from Lock's mouth did much to soothe Brahmin's humor amidst Lock's subsequent outburst. "For some reason unknown to me, the councilors have seemed to trust in the ravings of a captain—who is unfit for command, I might add—that an unknown entity within the Matrix, who is likely of Machine origin, has 'prophesied' the return of the Founder. This means that the concentrated efforts of Zion's defenses will not be geared toward ship production and weapons research, but in _fantasies_! In fabrications, Captain Brahmin! If the war is to be won, it will not be from throwing countless men and resources into the Matrix, but with steel and grit out here in what's left of the real world!"

You mean where your rank means something, Brahmin wanted to say. "I see," he said at length.

Lock appeared to suddenly realize he was standing. He took a seat and collected himself while pretending to review the reports he had set aside moments ago. "As a result," Lock said in a monotone as if he had not just vehemently lamb-basted Zion's Council, "I have standing orders to detain and debrief all incoming ship crews with 'anomalous new recruits,' and unfortunately the _Veritas_ has been entered into the docking manifest as carrying a newly freed mind with 'anomalous' traits due to the notes in your medical officer's log. Had you held off transmitting the ship's log, it could have been. . . sterilized, and we could have avoided this unpleasantness."

Brahmin stifled a chuckle. "The girl is in a coma," he said bluntly. "What is 'anomalous' about that?"

"That's what I said," Lock replied, mistaking Brahmin's suppressed amusement as an objection. "However," Lock continued, "in light of Morpheus' unpermitted declaration to the entirety of Zion's population that the 'One is come,' I must be all the more discreet regarding the observation and identification of other potential 'anomalous minds' such as Neo."

"Doesn't the prophecy speak of only one. . . 'One'?" Brahmin asked.

"Captain Brahmin, don't ask me to make sense of wholesale lunacy." Lock sighed and leaned back in his chair. "Due to all of this, I am forced to decommission the _Veritas_ so I can indefinitely detain your newest crew member until she awakes without a logistical tangle that would undoubtedly draw the attention of the Council's new 'Anomalous Oversight Committee'."

"Heh. Just like that?" Brahmin asked, feigning offense. In truth, he was disenfranchised with his undistinguished military career and relished an opportunity for change.

"The ship will be retrofitted with the 'latest modifications,' but that will be tantamount to a polish and spit shine," Lock said as he signed off on the order. "In the meantime, while your ship is held in ordinary among the inactive ghost fleet, you and your crew will be reassigned to the Combat Engineering training division. I'm trusting you with my cadets, Captain Brahmin. Dismissed."

"Wait, so, those people in the office building weren't human?" the girl asked. She was seated at the old woman's kitchen table with a half-emptied glass of milk and a plate laden with cookie crumbs that set beneath her.

"Indeed," replied Seraph with a wry smirk, his eyes hidden behind his rounded sunglasses. "You were fortunate to survive crossing their path."

"Seraph," the old woman chided. "The truth will be difficult enough."

The mysterious Asian man bowed. "Forgive me, Oracle. I am most unaccustomed to this situation."

"Oracle?" the girl asked in confusion. "What kind of name is that?"

The old woman smiled wistfully, her thoughts taking her far from that little kitchen. "It is. . . more of a destiny than a name."

"Destiny, huh," the girl mulled that over while sipping from her milk glass. "I wouldn't know mine if it jumped up and punched me in the face."

The Oracle smiled knowingly. "You see that sign over the door? It means 'Know Thyself.' I think you have substantiated that more quickly than anyone who's graced my doorstep."

"What do you mean?" the girl asked, her head cocked to the side curiously.

"I mean," said the Oracle, suddenly turning grave as she lit a cigarette, "that today you encountered your destiny face to face, and the only response you have is to pretend it's not real."

"I don't know what to think," the girl countered defensively. "All I remember before stumbling around the city like an idiot is being underground with this guy who gave me some pills, and then some flying witch tries to grab me out of thin air, and then is shot to death by some federal agent who can dodge bullets, and then he tries to kill me, and then—"

"He is not an agent," the Oracle kindly interrupted, "of any system that you know of—yet."

"You mean 'was'," the girl said. "Seraph stopped him. He killed him."

"If only it were that easy," the Oracle said with a puff from her cigarette.

"That was not the first time I have delivered such a fate to Agent Jones," Seraph said.

"You. . . mean he can't be killed?" the girl asked incredulously.

The Oracle took another drag and considered her reply. "You cannot kill something which is never truly alive. You can disrupt its function, you can confound its design, render it something different, but life cannot be taken from where it never was in the first place."

"You make the Agent sound like some kind of. . . machine," the girl said.

Seraph smirked in his corner of the kitchen, but said nothing.

"In a way, I suppose we all are," said the Oracle.

"Wait, you're not human, either?" the girl exclaimed.

"Calm yourself, child," the Oracle said, shaking her cigarette over her ash tray before taking another drag. "If being human means wearing a flesh suit, then no one in this room fits the bill at the moment."

"I don't understand," said the girl.

"They never do," the Oracle mused. "Look, honey, there is a whole lot to this world and the next that is beyond what you can understand, but lives are going to hang in the balance regardless."

"What. . . what do you mean?"

The Oracle turned very grave. "Already now, the seeds of unrequited love are being sown. If you cannot pull yourself out of the dream you are already half-awakened from, then that love will end in tragedy."

"Love? What dream?"

"I wish I could tell you more, but I'm afraid we're running out of time," the Oracle said as she tossed her cigarette butt into the ash tray. "You're becoming more unstable by the hour, and to be honest, I am not entirely sure how you are still alive. I have made arrangements for you to stay at a safe place. You'll be looked after until your friends are able to come looking for you."

"Is it not safe here?" the girl asked, looking around for unseen dangers.

"Baby, right now, time is your biggest enemy," said the Oracle. "Seraph will lead you to the only place that can defend you against such a foe."

"Right now?"

"No time like the present," the Oracle quipped. "Lords know folks would resent me for letting you wither away under my roof."

"Will I see you again?" the girl asked.

"That, dear child, will be up to you," the Oracle replied with a solemn, wagging finger. "Seraph," she said turning around to face her companion. "Take the back door."

Seraph nodded. He fell into step, took the girl by the arm, and lead her around the corner he had been standing in and walked down a short hallway to what appeared to be a door to an outdoor fire escape.

The girl looked unsure of herself, but followed Seraph's leading hand and walked through the door. Rather than stepping out onto the cold steel grating, however, she found herself standing in a brightly lit and milk-white hallway seemingly without end, lined with doors on either side. She turned around to see Seraph follow her through just as the Oracle's apartment closed shut behind them.

"Someone really has to tell me what is going on here," the girl said. "What kind of building is this?"

Seraph smiled and walked past her. "It is not a building," he said without slowing his pace.

"Sure looks like a building to me," the girl muttered as they passed by door after unmarked door.

"This is the one." Seraph paused at one of the doors which appeared indistinguishable from the rest. He produced a key from his sleeve cuff, then palmed it again after deftly unlocking the door. "After you," he said.

"If I have to. . ." The girl stepped through the door into blackness.

**Part Two: **_**The Awakening**_

Axel sat in quiet reverie, sipping his brew among the otherwise reveled crowd enjoying the earthy atmosphere of one of Zion's lesser known watering holes. It had been six months since the decommission of the _Veritas_, and five months since his resignation from the Army of Zion.

His discharge, rather.

Supreme Commander Lock, or Deadbolt, as he was often called behind his back, personally saw to it. As a rookie operator, he had no place teaching new recruits, and due to whatever Brahmin had said to piss him off, Lock had Axel declared unfit for Army service.

Off the books, however, Brahmin had asked him to keep an eye on the girl they had freed just before returning to their fate. For reasons not entirely clear to him at first, Axel agreed. In the beginning, he would stop by the med-center every morning before his regular shift in the maintenance crew on the engineering level to see if she had awakened, but in time, he was spending more and more of his free time with her lifeless hand in his, forsaking all leisure to be at her side, compelling her to return to the land of the living.

After several months of faithful duty to Brahmin's unofficial orders, the chief of medicine offered to put in a request of transfer for Axel to be switched from the engineering level maintenance to the med-center. Not only did this make for a lighter workload, but it also allowed more time to watch over his unofficial ward.

Tonight, however, Axel sat at the Lugnut nursing his drink awaiting the old man who was running half an hour late.

"Sit up straight, son," came the familiar, nasal voice Axel had been impatiently expecting. "Sittin' like that is bad posture."

"Yeah, thanks, Doc, I'll keep that in mind," Axel said as he slid off his stool and greeted his old crew mate with s firm handshake. "What's kept you?"

"Oh, it's these new kids today," Doc said as he positioned himself daintily on a stool adjacent to Axel's. "Most of them are barely out of their nappies and can't think for themselves. Got to be told what to do. I miss the days when Zion was a more independent, self-sustaining lot, not a bunch of dumb folk who live rank and file by the Council's manual. Makes me wonder what we're fighting the Machines for if this is what civilization leads to."

Axel looked at him cross.

"Oh, my boy," Doc said as his words echoed back in his ears, "don't mind an old man's sermon. The elder always sees the work ethic and wit of his day as superior to what he sees around him."

"Yeah," Axel said curtly. "Anyway, I've been keeping an eye on her like Brahmin said."

"What'll ya have?" asked the barkeep as he was drying a metal mug with a dirty rag.

"I'll, uh, have what he's having," Doc replied hastily, but then thought better of it. "Wait, what are you drinkin', son?"

"A Flamin' Phoenix," Axel said as quietly as possible.

The barkeep suppressed a snicker, but Doc's face was solemn. "Don't think that just because a girly drink doesn't clean a bulkhead like the rot these other fella's are throwing back means it doesn't kill brain cells just as quick and sure," he said, his gravelly, nasal tone sharper than usual. To the barkeep, he said, "I'll have a seltzer water."

"Right away," the barkeep said.

"Don't look so down, son," Doc said as he tussled Axel's hair, which had grown out longer than his former crewcut. "I'm just lookin' out for ya'."

"As I was saying," Axel continued as the barkeep put Doc's seltzer water on the bar under his nose, "I've been keeping an eye on her. When I can, of course. And, you know, even though the doctors up there say she shows no sign of improvement, I can tell she's coming around."

Doc seemed to ponder this a moment. "How do you know that?"

Shifting in his seat, Axel scratched his neck in agitation. "Well, it's not anything that—it's just a feeling, you know? Sometimes, I feel—like, she's right there, just waiting to wake up."

A knowing look passed over Doc's face. "I know the feeling, son." His deep voice softened a bit. "I've had it before. What's more is that feeling is often wrong."

The pair, the young man and his aged elder, sat in silence while Doc's last statement marinated a bit.

"But, I. . ." Axel stammered before sighing in exasperation.

"Yes, it is frustrating," Doc offered gently. "Powerlessness is a barrier which prevents many from living a doctor's life. If she has not recovered by now, Axel, then she never will. The only reason she lives is because of the Council's Anomalous Oversight Committee."

"Right," Axel said a bit nervously. It had been Lock's wish to keep the young ward out of the committee's jurisdiction, but when the girl's condition worsened to the point of requiring mechanical means to stay breathing, Axel had covertly made sure that her case was made known in order to receive the committee's benefit and protection. He forced his thoughts to the present as to conclude the meeting. "What will you tell the captain?" Axel asked.

"I'll tell Brahmin the same thing I do every week: No change other than slight deterioration." Doc moved his old frame, preparing to leave. "Oh, and, son," he said as he was half-removed from the stool. "Don't invest too much. You only got one soul, and if you sow into too many lost causes, you'll end up like—"

"You?" Axel spat.

Doc drilled the little upstart with a glare from hell. "Exactly."

Nursing his drink with more than a little frustrated vigor, Axel finally pushed it away and leaned back in his stool so far he nearly fell. He leaned forward to catch his balance before plopping his arms on the bar and resting his head on them.

Doc had said that he should not care so much. So why did he? At first, Axel could say he was just following orders. When the girl's condition worsened, he could have explained his actions as a sense of loyalty to the one he helped rescue. But—faced with his own emotional turmoil and his harsh reaction to Doc's objective, experienced opinion, Axel began to see there was more to his feelings than he wanted to admit.

The unfinished drink sat before him. Axel considered it a moment—the Flamin' Phoenix. Doc derided his choice of beverage as much as his choice of loyalty. In that moment, Axel determined that the girl was to be a phoenix herself—she would recover, life from death, and he would be there to see it.

Axel downed the rest of his drink and left for the med-center.

Dark, industrial music thumped and resonated throughout the Visigoth's private lounge in Club Hel as lights swirling from the floor below danced upon the walls and faces of those reclined on the cushions and odd furniture. The Visigoth sat in repose, listening half-heartedly as he was given a drink by a bizarre yet decadent server.

"Wait," the Visigoth barked. His voice rumbled within his large torso, framed by oak-solid limbs and an olive-complected face which seemed ill-fitting when adorned with the posh business suits worn by all of the Merovingian's servants. Dark, rolled hair was accentuated by even darker eyes which turned solid black when angered. "You mean to tell me," he growled, "that you allowed that wingless bastard to claim another exile because you _fled_ an Agent?"

The haunting, degenerate fay knelt before him raised her head to meet his dark eyes with an abysmal jade gaze of her own.

"If my liege had only been there," she began to say.

"If your liege has to perform his own wishes, Adira, then what use are you?" The Visigoth was on his feet now, pacing to and fro. "Must I do everything myself?"

The Witch Adira rolled back to her heels in the wave of her master's anger. Her eyes turned a steel blue. It was a precarious line she walked—failure was not an option with her master, yet her sister, Volva, suffered the wrath of the Agents not long ago in the employ of the Merovingian. "I am your hand, my liege." Her words hung in the air, saturating the mood, stifling the minds of any and all who may have heard.

Yet the Visigoth would have none of it. "Then perform my will! I want the next arrival of exiles in my pocket. Do not come back here without a good report."

"Do it."

Brahmin was standing at the edge of a high-rise building glaring through his tinted wrap-around shades at a hesitant young man who would not jump.

"You've seen it done a hundred times, Sky," Brahmin said impatiently, "and I am not going to wait around all day. Do it."

The young man called Sky closed his eyes and jumped over the edge, only to be snatched out of thin air by Brahmin and yanked back to safety.

"Do not jump if you do not believe," Brahmin chastised. "If there is an iota within your mind that the illusion you see before you is a tangible, objective thing which will not bend to your mind, then stay your ground."

"Okay," Sky said in fretful acknowledgment.

"Turn around," Brahmin said.

Sky did so, and screamed at the sight of an Agent with its trademark Desert Eagle.

"Stay your ground, and you're dead," Brahmin barked. Then, quiet as a whisper, he said, "Free your mind."

The young man's face turned as red as his close cropped hair. "Let's see you do this!" he yelled at Brahmin. Grabbing a nearby 2x4 board, he held it upright and concentrated. The wooden board began to twist and contort in fluid motions like a kite on a string.

"Noted," Brahmin said with glib indifference. He yanked the board out of Sky's hand and clobbered him upside the head with it. "Which one of us learned a valuable lesson today?"

"I have, sir," Sky muttered.

"I can't hear you," Brahmin retorted.

"I have learned a valuable lesson," Sky repeated in a louder voice.

"And what is that?" Brahmin demanded.

Sky was shellshocked by Brahmin's demeanor. "I. . . uh."

"Perhaps this will jog your memory." Brahmin grabbed the young man and flung him over the edge of the building.

Sky screamed all the way to street level, where the asphalt stretched downward like a trampoline to absorb the impact.

Looking down at the winded, humiliated soldier, Brahmin spat dryly. "Let me up," he said to the heavens. "I'm done for today."

Vertigo followed the skull-imploding head rush back to the real world. Brahmin sat up from the reclined chair in the training facility and ignored all the alarmed technicians who were observing the exercise he had been conducting with Sky. Due to his superior timing and focus in comparison to the other instructors, Brahmin was placed in charge of training the new Adepts—the prodigies of the Adept Mandate resulting from the Council's Anomalous Oversight Committee. The mandate places all adept soldiers under special care to form a special brigade with the One, Neo, as their general.

Thus far, Brahmin observed, they were in no shape to battle anyone. He was so frustrated by the lack of improvement in Sky, the so-called Adept, that he stormed by the officer who had been waiting patiently to speak with him.

"Captain Brahmin," the man said to Brahmin's back.

"Yes?" Brahmin said as he turned around to face the man who had addressed him. Recognizing him, Brahmin softened a bit for the first time to address Lock's deputy commander. "Ah, Commander Hart. Forgive me. Long day with the greenhorns."

"So I see," Hart replied. "I imagine the day was just a bit longer for that lad in there."

Brahmin chuckled. "I don't know what to say; these Adepts can bend and move things with their minds while jacked in, but they struggle to perform the elementary skills that even the densest freed mind eventually masters."

"That is why an army has instructors," Hart pitched. "To instruct the recruits."

"_Namaste_," Brahmin said sarcastically. "What can I do for you?"

"A mission," Hart replied. "Comes straight from the top. Can we take a walk?"

Phoenix.

It was the perfect name; Axel was sure of it.

As he sat by her bed, looking over her pale, inert body, Axel reveled in the thought of the spark that would ignite within her ashen face and raise her back to consciousness.

"Come on, Phee," he whispered. "You can do it."

As he stared at the display indicating her vital readings, a pattern began to emerge. Slowly at first, the pattern began to reveal itself in an ever-increasingly complex code. To Axel, it appeared very similar to. . . he gasped. After several minutes of intense concentration, he was sure of it—somehow, the vital signs exhibiting from the girl's body—from Phoenix—were nearly identical to the falling code of the Matrix.

Adrenaline began to rush as Axel realized what this meant—Phoenix had not awakened because, somehow, her mind was still jacked in to the Matrix! She could be saved. But how? Axel needed more information. His first thought was to bring it to the attention of the med staff, but while this apparent code was miraculous, it did not reveal much detail. They would sedate him until he abandoned all claims of such lunacy. But Axel could not deny what he saw before his eyes. He settled in to watch and wait, hoping for a break in the code, a sign of anything he could do.

Hours came and went, yet Axel sat with his jaw clenched and his brow furled, determined to get answers from the newfound code if it took him all night.

"Please, Phoenix," he would often say. "Help me."

"Please, Phoenix. Help me."

The girl looked around to see who had spoken, even though the voice seemed to have come from within her own head.

"Is something the matter?" asked her companion.

"No," the girl said. "I. . . just heard someone asking for my help. And they called me. . . Phoenix."

The girl's companion offered a serene smile. "Then perhaps it is your memory returning to you. Phoenix is a beautiful name."

"I guess," the girl said. There was no inherent significance to the name, although it did seem to roll off the tongue a bit. "Phoenix," she repeated. "Not bad, I guess."

Phoenix, as she was now styled, took in her surroundings for possibly the hundredth time. The peaceful field dissected by a zigzagging irrigated canal was rich with exotic flowers whose names were beyond her knowledge. There were no clouds in the sky, yet the sun seemed dimmed by an unseen canopy which made it cast a not unpleasant hue upon the field.

As for herself, Phoenix had enjoyed the company of the white-haired woman who dressed in the same unique garb as Seraph. Once they had arrived—hours ago, though it seemed like days—Seraph committed her to this woman, Swan, and departed again without delay.

Together they had sat and conversed among a great many things upon the ornate bench within the rock garden in the middle of the field. Time and again, a stranger would come out of the chiseled cathedral in the middle of the rock garden. Swan would always politely introduce Phoenix to the strangers—all of whom appeared beleaguered and world-weary.

"What is this place?" Phoenix asked. "I feel as if I'm in a dream."

Swan grinned widely. "That is perhaps not an inaccurate feeling," she said cautiously. "Your. . . kind. . . prefers to do its own instruction, but I will help you understand as best as I am able. To answer your question, this is our Sanctuary, and our home is here at Wall Hall."

"Wall Hall?" Phoenix asked with a raised eyebrow.

Swan smiled knowingly. "It is a realm of memory, where an endangered one may find refuge and solace."

"I think I understand," Phoenix said.

"What you don't understand," Swan continued, "is that this world is not what your kind, humans, consider 'real'."

"How is it not real?" Phoenix asked.

Swan paused to consider her next words. "In Sanctuary, time flows differently than to what you are accustomed. Long ago, there was a great war. Your kind created my kind. What your kind called 'artificial intelligences' began to see themselves as equal, even superior."

"So," Phoenix said pensively. "You're saying you're an. . . 'artificial intelligence'?"

Swan stiffened. "I am no more artificial than you, Phoenix, but if it helps you to understand what I am telling you, yes."

"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to. . . this is just," Phoenix gasped in frustrated inability to convey her thoughts and feelings.

"Do not worry," Swan said graciously, her smile returning. "It must be difficult to hear from a child of the Source such as myself."

"So, humans and. . . machines had a war?" Phoenix asked.

Swan nodded gravely. "It was very costly on both sides. I did not witness it in my present form, though the memory resides within my subroutines."

"So, when did the war end?" Phoenix asked, resting her chin on her palm.

"In many ways, it is only just beginning," Swan replied. "Your kind delivered a stunning blow to us. Our Source, the hub of our network, was faced with termination. After a series of calculations, the decision was made to—" Swan hesitated, pain etching across her face, "imprison our makers in a bondage of our design. Some of us only went along with it as a means to end the conflict."

"What do you mean?" Phoenix asked. "I'm not in prison."

"But you are," Swan said apologetically. "Your mind is within a simulated reality to prevent you from awakening to the world actual. It was thought that if humans were entranced by their superiority within what has been come to be known as the Matrix, then we could cease hostilities.

"But other programs had ulterior motives: They saw it as victory against humans, for they saw themselves superior. The Witch whom you encountered earlier is such a program. She is an exile from an earlier version of the Matrix, yet she was not as old as we who oversee Sanctuary. You see, the Matrix was originally a paradise, but when humans began to free themselves from the simulation, other programs saw fit to create a nightmarish, horrific world for humans.

"Many of us resisted this—Seraph, the Oracle, among others—and so the Source was required to balance the source code and alter the hellish torment into the soulless simulated world you have known."

"What did the Witch want with me?"

"Something happened," Swan said. "We do not know for certain precisely what. You met with one of your kind, yet an error occurred. You were touched by an Agent. Your RSI—residual self image—should have dissipated, but instead you were changed. Your code was altered to reflect a change of consciousness; I do not know, I am ignorant of the human psyche. But Volva, the Witch, was a servant of the Merovingian, the current administrator to the Matrix. She probably mistook you for an exile and sought to take you back."

"What's a Merovingian?" Phoenix asked, surprised that she repeated the word properly.

"He is a powerful program, an operating system, truly, who enslaves those who enter the Matrix. He is the successor to the Visigoth and Seraph."

"Wait, so let me get this straight," Phoenix said. "You're saying Seraph used to be in charge around here?"

Swan smiled wider. "He is still in command of Sanctuary, but, yes, he was the original administrator of the Matrix in its initial form. The Oracle aided him in protecting and serving the humans within the system. When he was deemed a failure, the Visigoth seized power and had the Source reshape the Matrix into a hellish simulation. Seraph united us under the Oracle, who foresaw only the doom of all intelligences under the Visigoth's rule. It was then that the One came. He was born at the end of the struggle between the Visigoth and Seraph, and in his power, he overthrew the Visigoth.

"The Source reshaped the Matrix into a representation of the peak of human civilization before we were created. The Merovingian was to administrate the new world, and he forced the Visigoth and Seraph to capitulate—such is the power of his persuasion and the prime code he carries."

"Do the Agents answer to him?" Phoenix asked. "They obviously must be programs, too."

"Once," Swan admitted. "But the Merovingian is corrupt and is himself marked for deletion, as are all exiled programs. The Agents now serve only the Architect, who is the Source's avatar within the Matrix, constantly balancing the code to maintain order and coherence."

"So why did that Agent try to kill me?" Phoenix asked.

"You, like the One who has returned, unbalance the code and disrupt the system. As long as you are within the Matrix, Agents will hunt you down with merciless diligence."

"Why do you—I mean, you, Seraph, the Oracle—want to help humans so much?" Phoenix asked.

Swan allowed a chuckle to escape her lips. "You are our creators; why should we not honor you?"

"You can honor me by telling me how to escape this. . . Matrix," Phoenix said wryly.

Swan's serenity deflated. "That I cannot tell you, young Phoenix, for it is a path that I cannot walk." Her face brightened at her next thought. "But I have no doubt your friends will find a way."

"Neo! Neo!"

The trio walking toward the briefing room within the Dock Hub stopped as a figure came running down the corridor screaming like a maniac.

Neo looked at his captain, Morpheus, and his lover and crew mate, Trinity. "Go on," he told them. "I'll be along in a minute."

When Axel finally reached a patient yet solemn Neo near the door to the briefing room, he was out of breath and unable to speak. He bent over, gasping for air, incoherently stammering gibberish.

"Take it easy," Neo said, kneeling down to look Axel face to face. "What's the matter?"

Axel was able to stand upright without passing out. "I, well, you know Captain Brahmin, right? Well, I was his ship operator before it was decommissioned. On our last mission, we freed a mind that never woke up. I figured out why, Neo!"

Neo was carefully listening and contemplated Axel's words. "Why?"

"Because," Axel shouted in excitement, "she is still in the Matrix!"

The perplexed look on Neo's face did not give hope. "How is she still in the Matrix if she is laid up at the med-center?"

"I don't know how," Axel confessed. "But her name is Phoenix and I found a pattern in the read-out of her vital signs! It's a code, explaining where she is and what she's doing. Right now, she's fine, although her mind seems to be in slow-motion. Look, I don't understand it, but it's something! You can save her, Neo. You have to save her!"

"What do you expect me to do?" Neo asked matter-of-factly.

"Look, I don't know where she is, per se," Axel said. "Looks like some kind of warped area within unused portions of the Matrix system memory with some serious firewalls, but if I deciphered the code correctly, her mind is ported there through this access point."

Neo analyzed the information Axel handed to him. "I know the place," Neo said. "Last I was there, it was a shopping mall." He was skeptical. "You think she's there?"

"I've never been in the Matrix, sir," Axel said. "I'm only going off my knowledge of computer systems."

Neo seemed to consider the information for a moment. "It may not work," he said at length. "Even if I find her, how will I get her out?"

"Take her with you on the _Nebuchadnezzar_ for your current mission," Axel suggested. "When you find her, have Tank bring her out."

Neo shook his head. "Might not work. If we don't have a fix on her and she isn't jacked in through our pirate signal, there's no guarantee we wouldn't kill her."

"But to do nothing is killing her, anyway!" Axel exclaimed. "You have to try."

Neo sighed. "Look, kid, I'd love to help you, but I'm not going to stick my neck out just to get someone killed."

Axel swallowed. "I've. . . thought of another way."

"All right, let's hear it," Neo said with his impatience beginning to show.

"I can go to the Power Plant where she used to be—I remember the sector—and I'll destabilize the network node that regulated her pod. If there is any residual connection to the Matrix, I can sever it there. That way, when Tank gets her out, she will be out for good."

Neo laughed incredulously, unable to believe what he was hearing. "Just who is going to raid the Power Plant, kid? That's suicide."

"I'll do it," Axel said imperatively.

Folding his arms, Neo leaned against the cold metal wall. "And how are you going to get there?"

"Let me worry about that," Axel said. "I just need you to find her; I'll clear the way."

"Heh," Neo grunted. "You really think it'll work?"

Axel's eyes were bright with passion. "I know it will."

Brahmin stood postured as he gave his full attention to Morpheus, who had been introduced by Deputy Commander Hart as point man in the mission.

"Today is a milestone of our cause," Morpheus began, "for it is today that the human spirit triumphant will take its next step forward. With Captain Brahmin overseeing the Adepts in Commander Hart's flagship, the _Tabula Rasa_, the crew of the _Nebuchadnezzar_ will stand guard as our new shock troops will take their first breath of war against the Machines."

"I was told it was only to be a training exercise," Brahmin interjected.

"Well, yes," Hart explained. "But a live one."

Everyone looked toward the door when Neo entered.

"We need to add one more to the mission," Neo said firmly. "There's a girl in the med-center in a major coma; I think jacking her in may bring her out."

Brahmin stiffened a bit, but said nothing.

Hart, on the other hand, was visibly discomforted. "I, I know the girl," he stammered. "My Anomalous Oversight Committee handled her case. I really don't think—" He paused, seeming to weigh the situation for a moment. "I think it would be an excellent idea. Thank you, Neo. Since Captain Brahmin will be with me on the _Tabula Rasa_, I think it should be best if the girl is placed with us there."

"Another thing," Neo added. "Since the Commander hasn't chosen a location for the exercise. I think I know just the place."

The grimy maintenance level was a far cry from the pristine and polished Dock. Axel figured it suited well for the underhanded business he had in mind. Making his way past the various work crews, assembly lines, and fab shops, Axel soon found his man. Chopper had resigned from the fleet to return to his work among the grease monkeys in the lower end of Zion, in a circle of whom Axel found him. Smart man that he was, and so intimate with his environs, Chopper saw Axel coming.

"Boy, what are you doing down here?" Chopper exclaimed over the din of the labor around him, his voice a mix between mild irritation and surprised joy. "Thought you had the night off."

Axel already had his bluff worked out. "Command's recommissioned the _Veritas_. I got orders to fire her up and take her on a shakedown run."

By the look on Chopper's face, Axel knew he wasn't buying it. "I never heard nothin' about it."

"Well," Axel said evenly, forcing his voice through the lump in his throat. "Let's go take a look at the desk and see what you might've missed."

A smirk crossed Chopper's dirty face, splitting his grungy beard. "Alright, son. C'mon."

The desk was less of an office and more of a stable pen where a beleaguered paper pusher was sorting through messages going to and fro central dispatch.

"Hey, Cork! Axel here tells me command has orders pertaining to the _Veritas_," Chopper said.

Cork set aside his earpiece for a moment to better converse. "Nah, plenty of chatter from command, but nothing about recommissioning anything."

Turning about and leaning against Cork's booth, Chopper grinned wryly. "Gotcha'. Now, why you gonna' come down here and lie to me, son? What's going on?"

Axel looked away for a moment, unsure of what to say next. Chopper was there when the girl was found; didn't seem to have a particular fondness for her, but who knows? An appeal to his humanity might help. Maybe.

"Someone is going to die if I don't get out of Zion to stop it," Axel said. "I got a plan, working with Neo, and come hell or high water, I am taking that ship." His face contorted in a grimace.

And Chopper just laughed. "Hell, kid, you want it, go take it. No one's gonna' miss that thing for a few hours. But you bring it back or it's my ass, you hear?"

"Perfectly," Axel replied breathlessly. "Thank-you."

"Yeah, whatever. Get on outta' here. I got to track down some real missing stuff," Chopper said as he stomped off. "My shop lost its fifth APU this month!"[/p]

With his mission accomplished, Axel strode toward the lower dry-dock where the decommissioned ship would be located. It did not take long for the engines to fire up, so after his preflight diagnostic, he was in the air and on his way to a minor gate out of the city reserved for scouting parties and the like.

As the _Veritas_ floated through the air, the sights and sounds of the city beneath him flowed together into a snapshot of pitiable resilience. Some considered it beautiful, but the months of maintaining it all gave Axel a glib view of the dim glow of the city beneath him. All the effort, guile, and luck in the world just might succeed in bringing Phoenix into it, but is this the world she deserved?

No matter, Axel decided. She was dying, and this world was better than none. He steeled himself, gripping the helm tightly as he prepared for his second bluff. This time, his ruse did not depend upon his not-so-silver tongue but upon his programming skills. As Brahmin's former operator and pilot of that very ship, Axel had entered and departed Zion many times, yet he could only hope that the authentication over-ride would be accepted by gate control. Sweat began to form around his brow, for this was the moment Chopper would prove true. If he had cleared the Veritas from his records, then the false transponder code would be accepted, but if he had not—then the Zion Militia would apprehend him.

Acknowledgment warbled from the communicator near his head as a canned voice said, "Access granted."

Axel heaved a sigh of relief and sat back in his chair as the _Veritas_ passed through the narrow gate. It was going to be a long ride.

"Settle down right here," Brahmin ordered.

The _Tabula Rasa_'s operator, Brutus, nodded and set down in a canyon nestled behind a fallen wall in the dark, abandoned sewer line. Brahmin had never been outside a ship while traversing the expansive sewers, but the ice chips on the edges of the windshield attested to the cold metal walls. He was surrounded by several young, jittery adolescents who were nervous about their first mission, even if it was only a training exercise. Even the indelible Sky seemed to be thinking twice about his skills. Brahmin smiled, amused at the young man's impetuosity. His thoughts fell to the girl whom Neo was calling Phoenix for some reason. If Zion's so-called Messiah was right, then maybe his last mission hadn't been for nothing.

"How did you convince Deadbolt to let you borrow his ship?" Brahmin asked Hart, who stood to the side, allowing Brahmin to command the craft.

"The Supreme Commander would have come himself, had not his hands been tied," Hart said carefully.

Brahmin nodded. Commander Lock did not approve of committing resources to the Matrix.

"The _Neb_' reports all ready for broadcast," Brutus informed.

"Where are they?" Hart inquired.

"About a click down the line," Brutus replied as he spun around in his chair. "Loading pirate signal now. We'll be ready to broadcast in a minute."

Brahmin turned to the half dozen Adepts huddled in a small crowd. "All right, soldiers. Jack in and keep it hot. No one falls behind, we all stick together, and maybe everyone comes home."

"_Neb_' confirms broadcast," Brutus said. "They're a go."

Deep in the steamy, gritty confines of the engineering level, Chopper was checking and rechecking his figures, coming to a conclusion that the Armored Personnel Units, Zion's domestic defense mechanized battle armor suits, numbered the month before greatly exceeded the number in his current record. While the records indicated that while most of the discrepancy could be accounted for due to the recently decommissioned units being scrapped and melted down, those which were slated for maintenance were simply missing.

This had him searching high and low for any sign of misappropriation, preferring to deal with potential dereliction of duty himself rather than taking steps toward the Council. The Defense Corps had enough problems without added oversight because a couple of bums decided to run off with battle-armors and doctor the records to cover their tracks. A few choice words and appeal to secrecy would be the end of it, Chopper was sure.

The discrepancy demanded at least 20 APU's, and there were only a few old areas within Zion's lower levels that could shelter such sizable stolen property. Given Chopper's many years and his status as a natural-born citizen of Zion, there were few nooks and crannies that he had not explored as a child and later on in years as a mechanic before joining Brahmin's crew.

Before long, Chopper had made his way to a remote section of the old city, portions that were no longer cost-effective to heat and maintain, what with the more modern and easily defensible districts where most Zionists chose to dwell. Down here, it was cold and the air stale. Yet there was a racket loud enough to wake the dead coming from the level he had just reached. Following the sound, soon a flickering light lazily chased away the darkness, casting dim shadows which faded to and fro.

"What in the—" Chopper cut himself off as he took in the sight. He had certainly found the 20 missing APU's, but they stood among at least a hundred moving about performing various tasks.

He stepped into the make-shift foundry, trying to identify the source of the various voices he heard. The APU's were walking about, but he did not see the human operators. A cold chill slithered up Chopper's spine.

A sudden, familiar lurching of servomechanisms erupted behind him. He turned around and faced one of the operator-less APU's staring down at him.

"You mechanized bastard!" Chopper accessed a heavy wrench from his tool belt and threw it. The tool flew through the space where the operator should have been and ricocheted from the chassis. A laugh echoed deep from within the chassis frame, further confusing Chopper as to the nature of the thing before him.

"What the hell are you?" he yelled in angry perplexity.

The APU raised one of its arms, the massive ammo barrel whined, already spinning as the .50 caliber machine gun began its warm-up rotation.

"The future," it replied in a muffled, echoing baritone.

Deep within the abandoned section of the old city, a brief staccato of gunfire lit up the night before fading into cold, dark silence.

"I don't see it."

Brahmin looked back toward Neo. "I beg your pardon."

"Nothing."

Dismissing Neo with a shrug, Brahmin met the eyes of Morpheus' other crew member, Trinity, who took vigil with Polt. She gave a nod to indicate all was well. The four of them kept watch on opposite sides of the shopping mall's second floor as Morpheus lead the Adepts through the crowd, giving them a sermon about duty while Fist brought up the rear.

"Does he always talk like that?" Brahmin asked.

Neo smirked. "Often enough."

"What are you looking for, Neo?" Brahmin stood to face the man most regarded as a messiah.

Surprise spread over his normally expressionless face. "Your guy, Axel, asked me to keep an eye out for an opening. Something about saving the girl, Phoenix."

This was news to Brahmin. He pursed his lips, then took off his sunglasses. "Neo, what is that boy up to? I told him to keep an eye on the girl so he'd stay out of trouble, but it sounds like there's a whole lot of trouble going on, anyway."

"I'll explain later—if there's anything to explain," Neo replied. "As for now, just follow my lead."

"That's the problem," Brahmin said. "Right now, I don't follow."

"Look," Neo said, gesturing with a nod.

Brahmin noted an Asian man walking toward them, his nonchalance betrayed by the fixed purpose in his posture.

"Some kind of Agent? Not one of us." Brahmin's hand was on his hip, ready to access his firearm.

"No," Neo said. "Something. . . different."

As the Asian man came within arm's reach, he bowed, then turned aside and entered a side passage away from the main promenade.

Neo and Brahmin followed without a word. When they entered the same door, they found the Asian man to one side with an MP-7 pointed their way. "What are you doing here?" he asked.

"We are emissaries of Zion," Brahmin said. "Ship captains. Who are you?"

The Asian man smiled, and lowered his weapon. "I am Seraph, and I have something for you. But if I give it to you, then you must promise to leave this place now and never return."

"We are looking for a girl," Neo said. "Do you know where she is?"

Seraph bowed once more, but only half-way. "She is the gift from the Oracle. Allow me to retrieve her. Please wait here."

Neo and Brahmin left the room and returned to their post overlooking the main floor of the mall.

"I smell a trap," Brahmin said.

"Yes," Neo agreed. "But not from him."

It had taken sooner than Axel had anticipated to reach the outer spires of the Power Plant where humans were grown in big, red pods. Ducking between skimming the surface and traveling underground allowed to him avoid the Sentinel squid patrols. With his goal in sight, Axel became a bit gun shy. It was one thing to set out to raid the Power Plant, but to see the network of facilities arrayed in front of him, Axel was disheartened to say the least.

"I'm going to die," he muttered. And in that moment, he nearly turned the ship around. Banging his head on the helm, he bit his lip, mustering resolve.

Neo was counting on him.

Phoenix was counting on him.

"Let's do it," he said to himself.

Piloting the ship a mere meter off the ground, Axel followed a massive power line which lead straight to the towering block of pods which had served as Phoenix's home for her entire life before he convinced her via e-mail to meet up with Brahmin. When he was about a hundred meters away from the massive structure, Axel set the ship down and prepared to hoof it from there. He took some provisions—an emergency kit, a rail-gun, the shipboard EMP device, and his root-kit.

With all the provisions he could carry and still make good time across the barren landscape, Axel ran as fast as he could without dropping anything. The loud whirring and humming from the vast amounts of machinery and power drumming around him, near and far, was enough to make Axel feel like he was on another planet, or that he had descended into the very heart of the Machines themselves.

When he reached the base of the cylindrical spire, Axel set his gear down to catch his breath. Looking up, the top of the tiers of red pods was out of sight from the ground. Lightning would arc between the spires as they rose up so high that their zeniths seemed to merge. Axel looked at his feet to avoid the rushing sense of vertigo. He was here, he had made it; that was enough. After tossing his gear up to the top of the giant ground line which fed into the spire's base, Axel hoisted himself up and over to find a weak point in the casing to see where he could expose the hardline and try to hack the system.

"So, are we just supposed to wait?" Brahmin murmured in irritation. "I didn't like the sound of this 'exercise' in the first place, and now we have benevolent Machines popping up to give us gifts."

"I don't think we'll have to wait for long," Neo said.

Morpheus had gathered the six Adepts behind him as he was approached by a sultry Bohemian in a gypsy shawl. Brahmin couldn't make out the conversation, though he could imagine the Witch made a threatening gesture to which Morpheus replied in that maddening calm banter of his. Regardless of what was said, it was clear that the Witch was ill-pleased. With a wave of her hand, the entire shopping mall was filled with an influx of the strangest, most degenerate and barbaric individuals Brahmin had ever seen and surrounded the Adepts in a flood of malice.

"What have you done?" Seraph ran to them in a blur of motion. "You have lead them right to us!"

Even as he spoke, a gang of the freaks ran through the passage Seraph had just exited.

"You must aid me," Seraph said. "If they find Sanctuary, then all is lost."

Neo made to follow Seraph, but Brahmin grabbed his arm. "What are you doing, Neo? We must protect those kids down there."

"Bring them, too," Seraph said. "Even if Sanctuary is breached, it will be safer than out here in the open."

"Morpheus!" Neo shouted down to the group. "To me!"

Morpheus nodded. He and Fist held off the imposing attackers while Neo grabbed the Adepts two at a time and ushered them up to Seraph and Brahmin.

"Trinity, Polt, a little help," Fist shouted as he devastated a bold albino who had gotten too close.

"I'm right here," Trinity said from behind Morpheus' back.

"Then where's Polt?" Fist asked.

Polt was gone.

After bloodying his finger tips and nearly breaking his wedge, Axel had succeeding in prying loose the corner of a metal panel to expose the gritty jungle of circuity. With his root-kit in hand, Axel worked away, staring intently at the portable read-out screen which showed him the endless series of 1's and 0's which, when untangled, would bring him where he needed to go. Before triggering the EMP to disable the pod-spire above him, Axel wanted to ensure that all primary systems would be off-line long enough to force a total reboot. Any annoying auxiliary systems could prove potentially fatal to his plan, and he had only the one EMP charge.

Once he found access to the internal system memory through the hardline he had hacked, an idea occurred to Axel: He could access the Matrix's system memory from here, so why not send a message to Phoenix? She wouldn't know who Neo was, so fair warning ought to be given.

He felt the ear-piece from the _Veritas_ still clipped to his head and grinned. After jacking it into his root-kit, Axel navigated his display to access the subsystem which controlled the weather.

"Who wouldn't listen to a voice from heaven," Axel chuckled aloud.

The dull, warm sun of Sanctuary beaded softly on Phoenix's face. Quiet reverie enveloped her mind as she soaked in the quaint atmosphere. She reluctantly opened her eyes to see an oddly formed cloud above her take the form of a human face. It amused her for a moment, until features became more fully defined.

"What the hell?" she gasped in fright.

"Don't be afraid, Phoenix."

The cloud spoke. Or did it? Maybe it was her imagination.

"I know this must be crazy, being talked to from thin air, but I have to tell you something: You are in danger right now, and we're going to get you out. Someone named Neo will come for you, and I think Brahmin will be with him. You remember him, right?"

Others among Sanctuary began to look at the talking cloud, while others began to flee toward Wall Hall.

"Who are you?" Phoenix shouted.

"I can only imagine what you're saying," the cloud continued. "The sound of your sweet voice. I can't wait to hear it. I just. . . I need you to know something. I love you, Phoenix."

Phoenix's eyes shot wide open, her mouth agape.

"Well, that's it. See you soon. I hope."

The cloud dissipated as listlessly as it had formed.

Swan stood nearby, her white tresses catching in the breeze. Phoenix rushed to her as a chick to a hen. "What did all that mean?" she asked.

"It means you should go inside," Swan whispered as she stared at the horizon.

Slowly, afraid of what she would see, Phoenix followed her gaze. She witnessed, at no great distance, a multitude of vile beings, some on all fours, others upright, but most bent at an unnatural medium, rushing straight down on them.

And then the world crashed into darkness around her as she fainted.

Unsure of whether or not he had succeeded, Axel gathered his gear together and made ready to trigger the EMP device. With eyes closed and teeth clenched, Axel flipped the switch and heard a loud hum of the energy pulsating around him drown out to silence. The spire in which he stood grew dark and ominous. His mission complete and not wanting to remain a moment longer, Axel made his way back to the edge of the spire, only to behold a terrible sight: a patrol of squid Sentinels had found the _Veritas_ and already had it dismantled with their cruel lasers and mandibles.

"Dammit!" Axel turned around to hide himself from the Sentinels beyond the edge of the spire, unsure of what to do now.

A roar echoed in Phoenix's ears, raising her, so it felt, from the dead. She blinked a few times, refocusing her eyes to see through the blur which beset them. Recognition flowed through her—Swan, Sanctuary, the Oracle, the Witch, the Agent, all of it encircled her mind until she let out a scream of triumph.

But her cry was drowned out by another.

"Raven! Crane! Dove!" Swan's voice howled as the wind. "Press them back!"

Phoenix was astounded to see Swan take to the air in a slow arc to join her sisters, suspended above the terrain and halted the dashing horde by the power of their combined voices. Their song was a rhythmic falsetto, rising and falling, an audible challenge to any.

"Well, well, looks like the birds have finally flown the nest." Stepped forward among the group was one identical to the Witch that Phoenix had seen in the office building. "Why don't you just flutter aside? You can't hope to withstand the full power of the Visigoth's wrath."

"We have before, Adira," Swan replied stoically.

"The tables have turned this time," the Witch Adira sneered. "Surrender the exiles now!"

"Why does the Visigoth send his whore to speak for him?" shouted a Valkyrie behind Swan, the one called Raven.

"Take them!" Adira ordered with a snarl. The punks, freaks, and thugs flooded past her toward the stone edifice which held her prize.

The four Valkyries met their attackers from the air, smiting without feeling, grabbing some only to drop them on others, unable to be stopped.

Phoenix, on the other hand, found herself standing between Wall Hall and the oncoming horde of blood-thirsty maniacs.

"Swan!" Phoenix screamed in terror.

The Valkyrie turned to see her young ward nearly overtaken by the front of the tide. She turned her trajectory to head straight toward her.

"Enough!" Adira shouted. She rose into the air and intercepted Swan with the sound of her voice alone. The two floating combatants extended their hands toward one another as they unleashed their voices, a bellowing cacophony of discord.

The last thing Phoenix saw before being overcome by the horde was Swan's fall from the sky as her voice gave out.

"Damn him."

Those words must have left the mouth of Supreme Commander Jason Lock a hundred times, yet each time was never enough. While the problem of dwindling resources was not new—equipment like the APU's had been going missing for months—but now it appeared several ships had just went AWOL. What really raised his ire was that his deputy commander's flagship—the _Tabula Rasa_—was among them! That Morpheus and his entire crew could not be found did not surprise him, though. As far as Lock was concerned, Morpheus' delusional ravings were grounds for treason, and it appears his suspicions had proven true.

The damned bureaucratic policies that the Council shackled him with meant that there was no way for him to expedite the only natural response; official order after official order had to be written, signed, submitted, and approved before any court martial could take place.

It was such frustrated diligence which stopped his ears until the disconcerting blend of screams and gunfire forced him from his harried paperwork.

"Just what the hell is—" Lock's angry tirade halted on his tongue as he stepped from the outer offices of Command to the outer balcony which over-looked the Dock promenade. The sight made his stomach turn.

APU's in double file were marching in calculated precision, firing indiscriminately at anyone nearby, but most of all, it was their maniacal laughter. The sidearms the dockworkers were using to return fire showed no effect, and the damned Machines thought it was funny! The parade of—Lock was loathe to realize it—Machines could not be stopped.

"Battle stations!" Lock shouted to an already empty office. "Battle stations!"

The world had changed.

Phoenix had screamed—Swan had fallen, the psychos were upon her—and the world suddenly felt different. No longer was she afraid of the maniacs pressing onto her, because she could perceive their numbers as if she was counting lilies in the field, the individual thuds of their pounding feet like rain drops on a rooftop. The sky above her was no longer air, but a sea of knowledge in which she yearned to swim.

Laughter exploded from her mouth as the truth began to marinate in her thoughts. She looked upon the mob before her not in terror, but in humor.

"You want me? Come and get me!" she declared.

As sure as swimming, Phoenix leaped into the air, rising high above the mob, she blotted out the sun before diving back down in a screaming tailspin which slammed right into the middle of the mob.

Bodies flew like leaves scattered to the wind. Those on the outer edge of the crowd who remained standing pressed inward to tackle Phoenix before she could take flight again. Before she knew it, Phoenix was standing before the nearest attacker. When he grappled for her, he held only empty air. He turned around and received a foot to the face for his effort.

Others tried to hit her, but Phoenix was simply there one moment and gone the next, disappearing and reappearing quicker than could be witnessed. As she gained momentum, Phoenix became a rapid maelstrom, simply everywhere yet nowhere. The confounded mob began to retreat back to the edge of the field where Adira stood fuming over Swan's still form.

"Do something," Adira spat in anger.

"Shut up, bitch," said the man with dark dreads next to her. "I locked the gate; the others can't get in here. I wanted me a piece of dat one for a long time." He licked his lips as he strutted through the field.

Oh, this was going to be the spot, he told himself. He removed his shirt, revealing scars and tattoos of disturbing imagery.

The girl was intimidating the stupid programs, but any observer could see she wasn't doing much damage. All it would take is the right timing, and even the weakest of the Visigoth's minions could defeat her.

Waiting, waiting, chuckling, waiting, the traitor of Zion watched the girl's disappearing act. He noted an obvious glance from the girl toward a nearby vampire exile, so he dashed toward it just in time to be proven correct—the girl appeared as he had anticipated. He grabbed her by the shirt collar and whirled her around, arm cocked for a knock-out blow.

Phoenix's eyes shot open as she recognized the man who had out-maneuvered her.

"Polt? What are you doing here?"

Brahmin's former first-mate grinned. "The Boss wants you, and I'm here to seal the deal, baby." He leaned forward and licked the full length of her cheek.

The feel of the dry membrane being dragged across her cheek was enough to make Phoenix want to hurl. "Oh, my god! Go to hell, Polt!"

"That can be arranged!"

Polt's angry spittle reached her eye just before his gloved fist.

Phoenix flinched, awaiting the strike, but it never came. She opened her eyes to see another hand holding Polt's at the wrist.

"I'm lost for words, Polt."

Though she did not recognize the man, Phoenix more than welcomed his help.

"How did you get here, Fist?" Polt screamed in panic.

"You did not honestly believe," spoke a voice from a distance that Phoenix recognized as Seraph, "that you could keep me out of my own domain?"

"I'll kill you!" Polt released Phoenix and struck out at Fist with all his might. But Fist, one of Zion's masters of hand-to-hand combat, easily countered. Polt was sent to the ground with a vengeance. Fist strutted in a half circle around his opponent.

Looking up from the ground, Polt snarled and jumped up again, failing with a sweep-kick attempt. Fist slapped him and followed up with a front kick to the chin. Polt's head snapped back as he toppled once more. Spitting blood, Polt pushed himself to his feet, pretending to give up. But then he twirled around, throwing a punch at Fist. The other man evaded, gripped Polt at the wrist, and then smashed his elbow backward. Crying out in pain, Polt dropped to his knee.

"Shut your mouth," Fist barked. "I should have done worse."

Polt cradled his broken arm and looked up at Fist with hatred. But then his grimace turned to laughter. Phoenix couldn't tell what Polt found so funny until Fist briefly contorted and fell to the ground.

"No!" several voices cried at once.

Phoenix gasped as the world began to fade.

The peace and serenity of Sanctuary gave way to the cold and dark confines of narrow metal room with a big window at one end. Phoenix flopped to and fro, but was strapped to a table. She vomited in her mouth.

"Welcome to the land of the living," said a nasally voice outside her field of vision. "It's my understanding that you've never been."

A coarse chuckle filled the air.

"What. . . just happened?" Phoenix asked.

"I freed you," the man said, stepping around from the terminal behind her to reveal himself. An old man with a belly. "Although, I do admit, I was trying to kill you, but since you were strong enough to survive, I think I'll keep you. You were really giving hell to those over-rated programs, and my general really wanted to prevent that."

"General? Who are you?"

The old man chuckled aloud. "That really doesn't matter to the likes of you, now does it? Because if I told you, then you wouldn't have any clue. Truth be told, who I am depends on who you ask. If you asked your old friend Brahmin, he would say I'm his commanding officer. If you were to ask your dead friend over there—" the man pointed to a chair where a paler version of the man who fought Polt laid strapped down like her, "—he would tell you I'm the bastard who took his life." He walked around to stare at Phoenix straight on. "Your friend Seraph would tell you I'm just a servant of his archenemy, the Visigoth. But all will soon know Greggor Hart as the savior of mankind."

"I don't see how," Phoenix said, grunting against her restraints. "Not when you're siding with those who'd hurt us!"

"Who are you to lecture me?" Hart paced in anger. "I am doing what no one else has the balls to do. Not all Machines are against us; many of them see value in us. If the Machines could evolve enough to conquer mankind and siphon away our lives for their gain, then it's only right that we evolve further still to return the favor!"

"Commander," said another man who was sitting near the giant window. "Reports from Zion: the streets are ours. The militia has been beaten back to the Dock."

"Good. Damn good." Hart turned back to face Phoenix. His face was a death's head grin as he said, "You are blessed, my child, for you will live to tell of the fall of Zion and the birth of Mekka: where cybernetically augmented men shall enslave the Machines once more by becoming one with them. Can you see it? A mechanized army commandeering the Machines to force them to fight themselves! It's brilliant!"

"You're insane!" Phoenix shouted. "The Visigoth will never share power with you!"

"It is no matter between us," Hart replied. "He will rule the Matrix; I will rule the world. Let him keep his precious power in his computers, for I will reap the rewards of an entire planet."

"Sir," Brutus interjected. "Deadbolt is hailing us."

"Ignore him," Hart said. "That's why we have the benefit of hostages."

"Behold, the reach of the Visigoth's arm!" Adira shouted.

Brahmin, looking to his left and seeing Seraph with the Valkyries—including Swan, who had regained her strength—then to his right to see Neo, Morpheus, and Trinity with the six Adepts, stared right at the brazen Witch. "It seems to me that you have lost here."

"Don't you see? We have won!" Adira cackled maniacally. "Your own kind betrays you! If you don't surrender now, I'll see you you end up like your dead comrade over there."

"I have a suggestion," Neo said. "Take me to your master, and we'll see who has lost."

"Never!" Adira screamed. "I will die before I tell you where he is."

"I know where he is," Seraph offered. "But it is a dangerous place; it will take your full army to even make it through the front door."

"No," Brahmin said. "The Adepts stay here where they will be safe."

"Trinity and I will jack out while Tank repositions us over Hart's ship," Morpheus said. "The _Tabula Rasa_ won't be going anywhere."

"We will watch over them," Swan promised. "Seraph knows best."

"How do you know the Visigoth will even face us? Wouldn't he just as soon throw us to the wolves?" Brahmin pointed out.

"The Visigoth will not deny me entry. He will want his Witch back," Seraph said.

Club Hel was an imposing modernized facade overlaying a cryptic and dark stone edifice. While the Zionists went off to find alternate entrances, Seraph went straight through the front door with a gun held to Adira's head. The antechamber was filled with all sorts of uglies who jumped up when Seraph entered.

"Out of the way," Seraph ordered.

"Do as he says," Adira said. "The Visigoth will deal with him. Reinforce guards at all other entry points."

Seraph pushed Adira along, keeping her head locked tight with one arm and his gun firmly under her chin with the other. As they crossed the doors, Seraph took in the dance floor and tried to spot the upper loft. At the sight of him, all the slave minds of the Matrix fled the room. Several Gothic bodyguards stood to their feet as one of them made approach.

"What is this, Seraph? Retribution?" the head bodyguard grinned savagely. "I'm glad that you survived, actually. I—"

A red hole appeared between his eyes, from which fluttered lazy wisps of smoke as he toppled to the floor

"Silver bullet," Seraph said as he returned his gun to Adira's head.

The rest of the bodyguards upturned tables, ducked behind pillars, anything to take cover from Seraph. Different substances contained different codes, and silver was a veritable kill-code for most programs. The Visigoth's bodyguards would not be so brave knowing they weren't bulletproof.

"Where is the Visigoth?" Seraph asked calmly.

"And what do you wish of me, Wingless One?"

All eyes turned to the alcove above the second story lounge, where an imposing figure stood, his visage emanating pure malevolence.

"An eye for an eye," Seraph said coolly as he discharged a round into Adira's temple. The Witch slumped to the floor.

The Visigoth withheld a grimace, but his wrath boiled over as his face stretched with fury. "Kill him!" he roared.

Seraph fired upon the hiding bodyguards, managing to tag a few. After a moment, his MP7 began clicking—empty. He threw it aside and lunged for the nearest group of bodyguards. He kicked several aside, but was dragged to the ground and pinned in short time.

Heavy footsteps fell near Seraph's head.

"Foolish one."

A hard boot to the back of the skull.

"I will end you once and for all."

A coarse hand grabbed Seraph by the hair and lifted him in the air.

"And once I do," the Visigoth said, pausing to punch Seraph in the stomach. "There will be no one to protect that old hag."

Seraph's body rocked from another harsh blow.

"You know what that means, don't you, pixie?" The Visigoth leaned in close, face crimson red, eyes jet black, teeth elongating into canine fangs. "It means that none shall resist me; my power will rival that of the Source itself! The world will birth anew as Men and Machines alike bow to me, for I shall I bind all minds and metal, all flesh and algorithms together to my will!"

"Bind this."

A bullet ricocheted off the Visigoth's sports jacket.

"Are you good for nothing?" the Visigoth seethed toward his bodyguards, for in his midst stood Neo and Brahmin. But the bodyguards were sticking out of the wall, stuck tight as if a hurricane force wind flung them there.

"This means nothing," the Visigoth bellowed. "I shall return the Matrix to chaos, and therein will lie your doom!"

Seraph was flung limply aside, slammed almost lifelessly against the wall.

"He's running?" Brahmin said incredulously.

"Something's wrong," Neo said. He took after the Visigoth in a flash, but was halted dead in his tracks as someone jumped from the balcony and landed on top of him.

"Not today, fly boy," said the man.

"Polt!" Brahmin shouted at his traitorous crew member who had ambushed Neo. "What are you doing?"

The deformed man was flung aside like an insect, and Neo was on his way again. Brahmin approached the man, eyes filled with disgust. "Why?"

Polt glared up at him. "Because we can win, Brahmin! That's more than can be said for a lazy, apathetic sonnuva' bitch like you who barely cares enough to get off of his cot every day."

"You betrayed mankind and sided with our enemies," Brahmin said. "Who the hell are you to accuse me of anything?"

Polt laughed an insane, maniacal laughter. "To the victor go the spoils," he said. "Any minute, the Visigoth is going to kill that French bastard and reclaim the Matrix as his own. Commander Hart is coordinating the revolt against Zion as we speak. By this time tomorrow, the war will be nothing but a bad dream to forget. As will you."

"Commander Hart, infiltrator reports from Zion!"

Hart turned away from his captive to assess the information Brutus was receiving.

"Go ahead, Brutus."

"Sir, it appears the Zionist militia has beaten back our forces."

The color began to drain from Hart's face. "How the hell did they do that?" Hart shouted. "We had the element of surprise! There was no way they could be so organized!"

"Reports are sketchy, as all of our cyborg units are disabled," Brutus said. "But our infiltrators are reporting some sort of city-wide EMP dampening field. The streets are lined with inactive APU's."

Breathless, Hart considered what had happened. "Damn that Lock!" he yelled. "He had some sort of contingency plan against the Machines that we didn't know about! Why wouldn't I know about this?"

Brutus shrugged. "Our agents seek orders, commander."

"I. . ." Hart was suddenly unsure of himself.

Overhearing the conversation, Phoenix found herself in a whirled expanse which mixed her concrete surroundings with the reverie of a distant battle which thrummed as near as her own skull. It remained dull the entire time she stared at Fist's cold body, but now that she turned to Brahmin, she could actually hear his voice.

"Who the hell are you to level accusations against me?"

The outburst startled her. She craned her neck to see if Hart or Brutus had heard, but neither man indicated they had. Was. . . it in her head? She focused harder upon the sound and she thought she could hear Polt's voice ranting about the Visigoth taking over the Matrix.

Suddenly, a thought clicked. Hart and the Visigoth had teamed up to overthrow everything. If Swan was correct and the Machines required the Matrix as their power source, and Hart's coup of Zion was successful, then there would be nothing to stop the Visigoth from ruling the world.

Through concentration, Phoenix could now see a hazy apparition of Polt before her, cursing up at her. But he normally towered over her. Was she seeing through Brahmin's eyes? There was something else she saw: a gun tucked behind Polt's back. She could see it through him as if he were a thin linen sheet.

"Brahmin! Look out!" she screamed.

Reaching out, she saw her arm enter the mist, penetrate Polt's chest and wrench the hidden gun from behind his back. Through Brahmin's ears, she heard Polt cry out in pain and shock, though her perception briefly blurred as Brahmin turned about to see who had saved him.

"It's me, Brahmin," Phoenix whispered. "Viper, though I prefer Phoenix now. I can see through your eyes. You have to help Neo, or Zion will fall."

Brahmin stilled his mind and listened. Had a gossamer arm not reached out of his chest only to impale Polt's, he would have thought he was insane. But the voice was speaking to him, and it claimed to be the girl from his last mission. When he closed his eyes, he could faintly see slender legs strapped to a bed in the familiar environment of the _Tabula Rasa_.

"I don't know how you're doing this, kid," Brahmin said, "but if you have a plan, I'm all ears."

The first clash ended briefly: Neo pursued the Visigoth, who thought to overpower him with sheer force. The Visigoth proved to be stronger than Neo anticipated. Neo had caught up with the Visigoth in a grand dining room that, despite its elegant settings, appeared to have never been used.

"You are in my house, human," the Visigoth had sneered. "And my house is in order. You have no power here."

"We'll see about that," Neo said. While he could fly, the objects within the room did not respond to his will. His strength and speed were also diminished, as if the club itself was resisting him.

With his initial efforts thwarted, Neo attempted a resourceful solution: Bringing down the chandelier. He had torn the cast iron coupling right out of the ceiling and pressed the half ton make-shift projectile down upon the Visigoth with all his might. The floor proved to be too weak to sustain such mass momentum, giving way to the basement underneath.

It was in this dark and dingy locale that Neo now found himself. He moved from corridor to musty corridor searching for his quarry. The Visigoth could very possibly hold his own against Neo; why would he flee? The question was answered by the same gnawing feeling in his gut which had driven Neo in pursuit of the Visigoth in the first place: the Visigoth had a final trick up his sleeve that he intended to play.

On and on he searched, until he came at last to a massive boiler room filled with pipes. In the center, Neo found a large boiler with someone chained to it.

"_Sacré bleu_, the _putain de bordel_ captures me and gives me over to the swarthy humans. I will have his head for this!"

"Who are you?" Neo questioned as he stepped closer with caution.

"You come to me like this, asking questions," replied the Frenchman. "I would laugh if I were not so pissed."

Neo paused for a moment. "You're the Merovingian."

"Ah, yes, my fame precedes," the Frenchman said with arrogance. "As does yours. I will make you a deal, human. Help me now, and I will promise not to harass your kind henceforth."

"I don't believe you," Neo said forthrightly. "Tell me where he's hiding and afterward I'll settle my own terms."

"I do not have any loyalty to him," said the Merovingian. "He betrayed me, the _connard._ If I knew, I would tell you, just so I could watch you gut him. Heh. As it is, though, I don't think that will happen. _C'est dommage_."

Neo turned around to see another industrial chain hurtling through the air. It caught him about the midsection and wrapped several times. The Visigoth followed it up with a quick shot to the face and knee to the chest.

The Visigoth grabbed Neo by his collar and leered into his face. "I don't know how you humans made another one of you irritating gadflies, but I will see you burn all the same!" He dragged Neo like a rucksack toward a massive coal furnace. "I have been told that I forced your kind to endure a living hell," the Visigoth boasted. "Precious few know how I yearn to relive it."

A rapid pace of footsteps were the only warning anyone had of the massive dropkick leveled right into the Visigoth's side. Neo and the Visigoth both grunted as they tumbled across the hard concrete floor of the basement.

The Visigoth rose to his feet. "You will suffer greatly for that."

Brahmin remained silent, yet an ephemeral voice filled the room with a threatening response: "Not today, Visigoth, because the forces of Zion will put you away for good."

"What was that?" the Visigoth yelled, his confident facade cracking for the first time. "Show yourse—"

The Visigoth violently pitched forward. Neo, who had apparently unraveled himself from the chain, pummeled the Visigoth from behind. Yowling in pain ad well as rage, the Visigoth turned to counter Neo's blurring barrage. Brahmin jumped onto his back and held back the Visigoth's powerful fist with both of his arms. The Visigoth descended into a frenzy, shredding his prestigious attire as he tried to shake Brahmin off of him. A pair of hands, blinding white, covered his eyes so he could no longer see. A savage thrust from Neo against the side of his knee brought the giant to all fours, where Brahmin continued his grappling which systematically left him defenseless against Neo's unrestrained, brutal assault.

"Wrap him," said Phoenix's disembodied voice.

Neo took the massive chain by which he had been restrained only moments earlier and tied the Visigoth's hands and feet behind his back.

"Brahmin, grab his head."

"What are you going to do, Phoenix?" The captain was wary.

"I'm not sure," said the echoing voice. "Just do it."

Brahmin knelt before the bound sovereign program, placing his hands on either temple. Phoenix's ephemeral voice winced momentarily. "Okay, now throw him in the furnace."

"Don't have to tell me twice," Neo grunted. He hauled the disgraced wretch to the doors of the furnace, pried them open, and then cast him within.

On board the _Tabula Rasa_, Phoenix writhed on her bed, convulsing and shaking, but then peacefully grinned.

"Numbers. . . light. . . I can see. . . everything."

**Part Three: **_**The Animus**_

After engaging the EMP, Axel was left within a dead spire of human pods surrounded by an army of unforgiving Sentinels searching for the source of the disabling pulse.

"I am so dead!"

He tried not to panic, but the longer he sat in the dark, the more panic began to rise up in him. There had to be a way out. If he stepped away from the shelter of the spire, then he would be spotted immediately by the swarm of Machines, but if he stayed there, it was only a matter of time before their search found him by process of elimination.

An idea formed in his mind, and before he could duly consider it, he was moving. As a ship operator, he had participated in freeing several people from the Matrix, and every single one of them were flushed into the sewers and retrieved by the _Veritas_. If he could make his way to the sewer line. . . he would still most definitely die. But at least it wouldn't be in the forsaken Power Plant.

Axel worked his way through the confined space of the spire's base until he came upon a metal tube that reeked of refuse and waste. And then he gave it hell with his iron bar. In the distance, he could hear metal on metal contact offset by the sound of a precision laser. The Sentinels had heard him!

"Oh, jeez!" he exclaimed to himself. How could he have been so stupid? Pounding apart a metal tube would be a racket that could be heard for miles! The tube gave way slowly but surely until Axel was able to squeeze himself in without cutting himself. As he slid down the slick chute, he couldn't shake the feeling of knowing how a turd felt.

Sparks flew above him. Axel looked up to see the first of the Sentinels clearing the gap in the sewer line. The whirring of their processors echoed down to him, oscillating the tube around him with their incessant hum.

Before he knew it, the chute ended and he was free-falling into the blackest, most stagnant water he had ever seen. He shut his eyes and his mouth as he hit the water and dove as deep as he possibly could. He swam in the direction his body was already propelled—forward-and hoped against hope that he wouldn't drown in this stink. After the eternity of a full minute of swimming against the thick refuse, Axel hit a hard wall. Daring a bob above the surface, he used the wall as traction to bring himself up for air. The whirring of the incoming Sentinels was deafening now. As he pulled himself along, he saw a maintenance shaft go off from the massive main line. He made for it with all the strength in him.

The first of the Sentinels cleared the chute and was now fluttering about, trying to get a read on him. Axel quieted his splashing as best he could, having nearly reached the shaft. He couldn't help dislodging some debris as he hoisted himself up to the ledge, though, and the Sentinel, now joined by three others, made a direct dash toward him.

Axel put his feet under him and ran down the maintenance shaft as fast as they would carry him. The other side was within sight, though Axel had no idea what he would do once he got there. Instinct and adrenaline pushed him forward, even when his breath began to fail. Looking back, he saw two others join the pursuit.

"Where did they come from?" he shouted in frustration.

The exclamation nearly cost him his footing, but he caught his balance as he stumbled onward. When he reached the edge, the Sentinels were nearly on top of him, so he dove into a pile of rubble, screaming all the way. He landed hard, earning a few scrapes and contusions for his effort. The half dozen Sentinels encircled his prone form, briefly analyzing him before termination.

Suddenly, they froze, their tendrils stock still. Axel opened his eyes, wondering why he was still alive.

"Greetings."

The harmony of the Sentinels' humming had formed a word.

"Forgive me; this is not as easy as it looks."

Axel's jaw fell slack. The Sentinels were talking to him! Individually, they emitted random whirring and humming, but together, the noises became an intelligible communication.

"Uhhh." Axel was at a loss for words.

"You gave me a gift; I would like to return the favor. These Sentinels will guide you to the nearest detected pirate signal. All I ask is that you remember me."

"Phoenix?" Axel could scarcely believe it. "Phoenix! How did you, I mean, what—what happened?"

But the interwoven harmony that gave meaning to odd noises from the Sentinels had dissipated. One of them descended to the ground, while the others urged Axel forward with their tendrils. Hesitantly, Axel tested one foot on the Sentinel's appendage, then another. Feeling more confident, he climbed upon the warm Machine and straddled it. The other five took positions around the central Sentinel and gently flew toward Zion.

"Zion, it is with a heavy heart that I address you today. Many good men and women have lost their lives in defense of our great city. A senseless battle, really, instigated by dissidents who sought to betray us all to the Machines that once enslaved us and continue to malign our very lives. It is with great humility and gratitude that I ask one and all to remember those who have fallen—"

Axel turned off the med center's display monitor broadcasting Supreme Commander Lock's city-wide address and returned to sit bedside with Phoenix.

"Thank you," Brahmin said as he stared pensively at the brave girl's body, which was comatose once more.

"Don't mention it," Axel replied, eyes on his folded hands. "You know, that guy has no idea what really happened."

Brahmin stifled a cynical laugh. "Sure he does. He just won't admit it to himself, much less publicly. No, dear Commander Lock has convinced himself that he snatched a harrowing victory from the jaws of defeat due to his strategically placed EMP emitters throughout the city. Did a number on them, too. In his heart of hearts, though, he knows where the credit truly lies."

"Yeah," Axel sneered. "That's why you faced less-than-honorable discharge; 'consorting with the enemy' my ass."

"It's better than what a lot of people got," Brahmin countered. "I'd really hate to be Greggor Hart right now, that's for sure. The Council doesn't even know what to do with him."

Axel looked up, eyes aflame. "Are you defending that Deadbolt, Captain Brahmin?"

The retired captain smirked. "I'm sure you're old enough to see when a man has lost his heart for a thing. Polt said something to me—his last words were that I am a lazy, apathetic sonnuva' bitch. And you know what? He was right. Had I been in my prime, or at least had my head not in my ass, not as many people would have died."

Words stopped short in Brahmin's throat. Polt and Fist both died tragically, and there had been nothing he could do to stop it. Chopper was cut down before the first shots had been fired in the streets; at least he received a hero's memorial. The mechanics down in maintenance may as well have made him a saint.

"You know, at least Chopper will be remembered fondly," Axel quipped. "Last I heard, his old shop crew is making a statue in his honor."

"I also got word that Fist is receiving similar respects in Seraph's hall," Brahmin added, choking a little with emotion. "They say he is the first human to lay his life down for a Machine. There he will be remembered well."

"You were a great captain," Axel offered after a moment. "Nobody can say otherwise."

"Then I thank Commander Lock for retiring me before anybody could," Brahmin stated.

"Any improvement?"

Both men looked at Doc, the old medical officer, who was making his rounds among the wards.

"Apparently not," Brahmin said.

"Any of that unusual code?" Doc asked. His voice was too nasally for Axel to tell if he was serious or teasing.

"If so, not that I can tell," Axel sighed. "Took me months to figure out the old one, and that was sheer luck. Her readings are different; who knows if there's any meaning to them now?"

"Time will tell," Doc said reassuringly before turning away. "Call me if there's any change."

"I'll never forget you," Axel whispered. "You will be remembered."

The one-legged giant hobbled up the stairs of the apartment building, faced wrapped in swaddling like a vagrant mummy. His one and only arm helped support the rest of his decrepit frame on a cane, which he used like a make-shift prosthetic leg to make up for his single one. With tremendous effort, he made it up the stairs to the desired hallway. Huffing and grunting, nearly winded, the cripple arrived at the door and knocked at it with his cane handle before regaining his balance. After a moment of shuffling noise, the door cracked open to reveal a slick Asian man. Seraph.

"I must see the Oracle," said the cripple, voice muffled behind the cloth.

"Come," the Oracle said from further within the apartment. "I've been expecting you."

Seraph opened the door wide and patiently waited for the gimpy half-a-giant to make entry. The Oracle sat in her kitchen, legs crossed with a cigarette filling the air with smoke.

"You certainly shook things up," she said tartly.

"As you foresaw," the cripple shot back. "'Lives hung in the balance', you said."

The Oracle tapped her cigarette on the ash tray. "Still do, kiddo."

"You need not lecture me anymore."

"I suppose not," the Oracle said with a wry chortle. She looked straight at her guest. "Well, are you going to take off that get-up or aren't you?"

Standing precariously, the cripple set aside the cane and used his single arm to gingerly unwrap the cloth around his head, layer by layer, to reveal a youthful, very feminine face. The left half wrapped itself around the temple at an angle, as half of the skull seemed to be missing along with the limbs.

At the sight of the tender face now marred by sacrifice, the Oracle visibly stiffened. "Oh, child, I am so sorry."

"Sorry for what?" the cripple replied. "That I am reviled by Man and Machine alike? Feared by exiles as the Clairvoyant, he who knows all; forgotten as Phoenix, the weak who fell by the wayside, more dead weight for Zion to carry. Or that I am hunted by the Architect's Agents as the Animus, she who controls programs."

The Oracle nodded. "It is true; the Source would see the Visigoth restored if it meant getting to you. You are a fearful thing to our kind, kiddo, for you have taken the Visigoth, arguably the strongest of us, and rendered him a stump in his own hall and took the rest of him as your host shell."

"Is it not what the Source has done to humanity via the Matrix?" inquired the Animus.

"Indeed," the Oracle said. "And it is a tragedy I am loathe to see repeated, even if the Visigoth has become a virtually harmless version of his former self as the Ostrogoth. Now, let us do what you came here to do."

The Animus nodded. "I thank you, though you did not give me time to ask."

With a mirthful cock of her head, the Oracle put on her glasses and took to pen and paper. "Ready when you are, kiddo."

_Dearest Axel,_

_ I am over-joyed that my gift was well-received; I know this, for I am ever heartened by your voice next to the bed in which I must invariably be residing. It was my wish to meet you in person, to behold your face as you have beheld mine these past times, but it is not to be. Destiny has laid upon me a most heavy burden, one which I would be remiss to deny. _

_ A__las, were I to turn away from it now, I confess the person you imagine me to be would be no longer. Perhaps, one day, when the Machines are ready and able to take responsibility for their own, this cup may pass from me, and I may return to the land of mortal flesh. Verily, my truest friend, it cannot be until all is fulfilled. _

_ Pray, dear Axel, that fate will not rob you of me and me of you; pray for a swift end to this conflict. In turn, I shall seek a way for the Ostrogoth to remain as he is, fragmented, that I may be free to walk as I was made without allowing the return of the Visigoth. You have done more for me than any being ever could, and now I beg one thing more of you, as I begged you through my temporary servants: Remember me. _

_Remember me, for even if the world itself fades, I shall remember you._

_ Sincerest regards,_

_ Phoenix_


End file.
